Americans will go to the polls tomorrow and elect a new president. It’s an awesome responsibility, one of the defining characteristics of a free people.

Americans United is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. Under federal law, we can’t endorse or oppose candidates (although we can take sides on ballot referenda). Unlike some Religious Right groups, we respect this law and follow it.

It’s not our job to tell you how to vote. It is our job to remind you why civic participation is important. And it’s our job to tell you – and all Americans – what we stand for.

Thirty-eight states protect religious liberty in their constitutions by prohibiting taxpayer money from being used to fund religion or religious institutions. These “no-aid clauses” safeguard the integrity of houses of worship by ensuring that they do not become beholden to state interests. Next week, however, Oklahoma voters will face State Question 790, a dangerous ballot measure that, if passed, would repeal Oklahoma’s no-aid-to-religion clause and erode the separation of church and state there.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized same-sex couples’ right to marry, the fight to attain equal treatment for all advanced to a new and much-needed area of the law: protecting the rights of transgender persons.

Missouri voters will be asked to vote on several ballot initiatives on Nov. 8. As the president and vice president of AU’s St. Louis Chapter, we hope that Missourians will vote no on Amendment 3 because it would strip religious freedom protections from our state constitution.

Amendment 3 is officially titled the Early Childhood Health and Education Amendment. Its stated purpose is to improve health care and increase access to early childhood education opportunities by implementing a tax on cigarettes.

It’s Halloween, and I’m looking forward to distributing treats to the neighborhood children who come to my house tonight. As long as those creepy clowns stay away, it’s sure to be a good time.

I enjoy a good horror movie every now and then, but to me, the real world provides a more disturbing array of actual chills. In fact, here are seven things way scarier than ghosts, werewolves, zombies – and even phantom clowns:

The Religious Right tends to dial up its gloom-and-doom predictions every election season in an attempt to scare its base into voting for candidates who will supposedly uphold “biblical values” (or, more likely, the far right’s narrow view of theology). This year is no different, but some religious zealots are taking scare tactics to a new level by suggesting that this could be the last presidential election ever in the United States.